The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption, American prison-drama film released in 1994 and based on the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982), by the American author Stephen King. The film’s director and screenwriter, Frank Darabont, paid King a token fee of $5,000 in 1987 for permission to adapt the story. Although not an early box office success, earning only $16 million during its first release, The Shawshank Redemption was acclaimed by most critics—among them Gene Siskel, who called it “one of the year’s best films.” In 1995 The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for seven Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards, and in 2015 it was inducted into the National Film Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress, as a work that is “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to America’s film heritage.

In Maine in 1947 Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), a banker, is wrongly convicted of having murdered his wife and her lover and is sentenced to two consecutive life terms at Shawshank State Prison. There he befriends Ellis Boyd Redding, known as “Red” (Morgan Freeman), a convicted murderer who smuggles contraband into Shawshank for other prisoners. Red gets Andy a rock hammer and a poster of the actress Rita Hayworth.

In 1949 Andy overhears the chief prison guard, Byron Hadley (Clancy Brown), complaining about being taxed on an inheritance. Drawing upon his banking experience, Andy gives Hadley advice on how to handle his finances. Soon afterward Andy is assigned to the prison library to assist an older inmate librarian, Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore). Word gets around about Andy’s former profession, and soon he is doing financial work for all of the guards and even for Shawshank’s warden, Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). Andy begins writing weekly letters to the state legislature asking for funds for their meager library.

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In 1954 Brooks is paroled after serving 50 years in prison. Unable to cope with life on the outside, he eventually takes his own life. The state legislature finally sends donations for the prison library, which the prisoners name in Brooks’s honor after learning of his death. In 1963 Norton begins using cheap prison labor to win contracts for public projects while occasionally accepting bribes from other contractors. Andy launders Norton’s money under an alias of his own creation, “Randall Stephens.”

In 1965 Andy befriends a new arrival, Tommy Williams (Gil Bellows), who is in Shawshank on a burglary conviction. Andy helps Tommy complete his high school education by passing a GED (general equivalency diploma) exam. Tommy tells Red and Andy about a cellmate he had in another prison who confessed to him about killing a woman and her boyfriend and how the woman’s husband, a banker, was convicted of the murders. Hoping for assistance from Norton, Andy informs him of Tommy’s revelation. Norton, however, refuses to believe Andy’s story, and when Andy promises to never speak of the money laundering he was performing, Norton orders him into solitary confinement. Norton then directs Hadley to kill Tommy under the guise of an escape attempt. When Andy is finally released from solitary confinement and learns of Tommy’s death, he tells Red that one day he will be in the town of Zihuatanejo, Mexico. He also tells Red about a particular field near the town of Buxton, Maine, and makes him promise that, if he is ever released from prison, he will go to that field and look for something that Andy has buried there. When he finds out later that Andy had asked another inmate for a length of rope, Red worries that his friend intends to kill himself.

The next morning during roll call, the guards see that Andy’s cell is empty. Behind a poster of Raquel Welch the warden finds a tunnel that Andy dug with his little rock hammer over the previous 19 years. The night before, when Andy escaped from Shawshank through his tunnel and then through a sewage pipe, he took with him the ledgers proving Norton’s money laundering, along with the warden’s suit and shoes. While the prison guards search for him, Andy walks into the first of several banks and withdraws more than $370,000 as Randall Stephens—a person who, until that point, had existed only on paper. Andy also mails evidence of Norton’s money laundering and other crimes to a local newspaper. State police arrive and take Hadley into custody, and Norton takes his own life to avoid being arrested himself.

Soon afterward Red is paroled after serving 40 years in prison. He follows Andy’s directions to the field near Buxton and finds a box containing cash and a letter from Andy telling him to come to Zihuatanejo. Red violates his parole and travels to the beach town in Mexico, where he finds Andy working on an old boat. Finally reunited, the friends embrace.

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